Modern data-intensive, multi-user applications impose trememdous requirements to access huge amounts of data over wide geographic areas. Storage networks via fibre channel can help to satisfy these requirements. Fibre channel is a high-performance, user-configurable transport system developed by ANSI. Fibre channel is an interconnect architecture that complements high-performance computing, storage, and networking functions.

At the UUASC September meeting, Charlie Nogales, Director of Engineering at Emulex Corporation, will provide us with an overview of fibre channel, covering fibre channel's speeds, topologies, and service classes. Charlie will also explain how fibre channel is applied to build and manage a storage network, what the advantages are to doing that, and give some examples.